I think, visually, Fellowship of the Ring has some of the best effects. The Balrog scene is my favorite in the entire series. The battles in TT and ROTK are good, but like it has been stated, both had boooooring moments. Fellowship is the shortest, best looking, smoothest story of the bunch.

i LOVE the ents! neevr skip any of their scenes. might be the best of TTT.

Yeah I find the Ent pats the most boring - though I love when they attack Isengard.

Remember when all three LOTR films were in the top ten of IMDB's top 250, now all three are gone.

Time makes corpses of us all.

#12, #18, #30. Geez, what awful films

no he did mean they were all in the top literally and ROTK was like number 2 or 3.


So, the film at first was seen as the best film ever, but over time we see the film as the best fantasy film ever made.

Well they are still very much beloved.

The funny thing is - I was dissapointed with FOTR and TTT on first viewing (now i love them) but I loved ROTK on first viewing. Now ROTK is the only one that has lost a little over time (but i still love it).

Not a fan. Not even of books now...

I very much remember, trust me.

Is it overrated? You betcha. Is it still fantastic? You betcha.

It is a film than upon repeat viewings looses a lot of steam, but is still fantastic.

A/A+

It is overrated but people have realized that yes, it is one of the best Uber-Blockbusters ever made but it is nowhere near to being the best film ever made.

The film is a spectacle of the grandest kind however in the last part the spectacle becomes to large and you feel lost. The film has some great scenes that make you jump for joy or cry in despair however when you watch the film a second time and a third time, you do not get these feelings. Your heart does not pound when the horses charge and you start to focus on the weak points of the film. Scenes that could have made the film even better if they were changed. For example, the scene between the Witch King and Gandalf could have been 100X times better and was nothing compared to the scene with Balrog in FOTR. The scenes are epic and large but they are missing something that made the Helms Deep or the Moria scene so great. I do not know what it missing.

Anyways the ending appears to be hastily done and really, the film does not feel as magical as FOTR was. I say in twenty years FOTR will be the film that will be remembered and loved. FOTR is not as grand as ROTK but it got the true vision and spirit of what JRR Tolkien created. That film felt like a real fantasy film and the film is a different kind of spectacle. Instead of thousands of orcs, you see the grandness of Middle Earth. IMO the scenes with the two large statues was the most epic and eye-popping scene in the whole series. The whole series is an epic of the grandest scale we have seen and will see for some time, and the films will be remembered as a series of great films but not anywhere close to SW or the Godfather or anything of that sort.


A-

FOTR had such amazing editing and cinematography, though.

Only 5 pages?!?

Just edges out Fellowship as my favorite.

A

After a recent viewing of the trilogy I'm lowering my ROTK grade to B+ no better than Kong.

FOTR - A+
TTT - A
ROTK - B+

A-

Aragorn: [to Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry] My friends. You bow to no-one.
[He kneels, and the entire kingdom follows suit, kneeling to the hobbits]

i still tear up everytime i watch that scene.

I saw the franchise for the first time in 2006; aLthough this is stiLL in my Top 25, I thought it got weaker by the second time I saw it. Amazing movie experience, but its not the best of 2003 'cause Nemo is just so hard to top.

A

I'm honestly not surprised at the diminish of reverence the trilogy is starting to get. I figured it would probably happen for most people. Living through the movies had just as much of an impact on how the movie was viewed as much as the quality of the movies themselves.

It hasn't happened to me though, and I doubt it ever well. All three movies hold the top three spots on my all-time list by a huge margin, and the chances of that changing are slim.

We'll be watching you...

Can't wait to prove you wrong.

Honestly, if the diminish has happened to me yet, it won't. I've watched the movies dozens of times each.

I haven't had that experience at all. Maybe it's because I didn't appreciate filmmaking techniques and a lot of small movie touches when I first saw these that I do now, but when I last watched these films (probably the fourth viewing of all of them), I liked them the most that I ever had. Maybe it's because now it's sort of the cultural phenomenon that we can look back on and say that we were a part of, kind of like Harry Potter will be in a few years, but there is something in these films that I just don't get with any other kinds of movies. Not because they're the best films I've ever seen, but because they are for me what Star Wars was for people now approaching and in their 50s. I don't think I will ever stop loving the Lord of the Rings movies, even if there are definitely some problems with them (and I am even willing to say that Elijah Wood gave, for the lead actor in such an enormously popular trilogy, a weak-ass performance. Probably the weakest in the entire cast).

However, I dunno what'll happen when I show my kids these films however long from now that is. If they age as well as Star Wars did, then I guess they'll love them too, but I honestly can't see kids a few generations from now appreciating a ten-hour story with special effects that will be very dated.

oh, and I bet the "Hobbit" movies will resurge everyone's love of the series, as long as Del Toro approaches the quality of the trilogy.

Quality never dropped for BJ the first two are classic genius, the third film is overrated kong levels of boring, LiT was robbed in 03 and FOTR was definitely robbed in 01.

I still retain hope that the novel will finally be adapted properly in full CGI round about 2030...

do you mean like an animated film? Or like the Star Wars prequels, where every shot had CGI dominating the screen?

or are you being sarcasting because you aren't an LOTR fan...